Into the West

I'm happy to inform you that I passed my final exam on Monday, so now I (almost officially) have a diploma! I'm still exhausted because I arrived home yesterday night after 2.5 hours of travelling, I slept until 10am today but still feel so tired I could sleep until next morning. Too bad I have tons of things to do today, and I'll even go to the theatre in the evening (or maybe I'll just skip that and ask my mom to go instead of me, I don't know).

But hey, I'll set off into the west in 13 days!

Míorúilt

Dear All,

If you ever want to experience a real miracle, go and start learning Irish Gaelic. I mean it.

When I began to learn it two years ago at the university as an optional course, my teacher started the first lesson with quite a weird statement: Irish Gaelic is spoken by ridiculously few people as a first language, and instead of it, English is used in almost every household in Ireland, yet if you're a foreigner and have even the most basic knowledge of Irish, and you move to Ireland, there you will be incredibly popular.

Actually, back then I didn't really know if I should have taken it literally or not, but it wasn't important. I started that course just because I'm fond of languages in general. I'd never tried learning any Celtic languages before, and Irish seemed to be such an exotic and interesting one that I just couldn't miss this opportunity to study it for free from a professional teacher. And that was all for a while.

For several reasons, I've been intending to relocate to an English-speaking area after finishing my university studies. My main goal is to get rid of my Hungarian accent and pick up a local one as some years later I'd like to have a job related to talking in English, and right now I'm not very good at that. During my years at the university, I got interested in Irish culture and history, partly thanks to the language course I mentioned above, and partly because of other courses and Irish movies we watched in class (not to mention the fact that some of my favourite actors are Irish, either from Northern Ireland or from the republic). So I decided to give it a try and look for a job in the Irish Republic. A few years ago when I needed a job in Spain, I was recommended an online database for au pairs. In the end, I spent some months in Madrid as an au pair, which I absolutely enjoyed. So I registered again to the same website and tried to look for an Irish host family this time.

When I sought a Spanish job, I wrote hundreds of applications (I think, literally), yet I didn't get any positive replies for many weeks. I don't remember exactly, but I think it took about 3 months to actually find a family and arrange the journey. In general, the number of registered au pairs is around 3 or 4 times more than the number of job opportunities, so most of the au pairs do not even find a job. One of my biggest fears was that I wouldn't be lucky this time - Ireland is a much more popular place than Spain, so families would probably not even notice me among all those candidates. Nonetheless, I filled up my profile, where I also mentioned that I have a very basic level of Irish Gaelic. And what followed was just amazing.

In less than a month, I got tons of applications from Irish families. I didn't even need to browse family profiles and contact people myself - I was contacted several times from all around the country: Dublin, Galway, Cork, Donegal, etc. I couldn't even decide which family to choose! Some of them mentioned it's great that I speak a little bit of Irish because it's a compulsory subject in primary schools in Ireland, so I can help the children with their homework and practise the language with them, too. Others wrote that it's nice to see that some foreigners are this passionate about Irish Gaelic, because it's slowly but surely heading towards extinction. I've never felt so popular in my life. I was swamped with positive feedback: it is worth learning Irish Gaelic, and my teacher was right about it. So all I can say is that I'm really grateful for being given this opportunity.

Now it seems that in the beginning of February, I'll fly to Letterkenny, Co. Donegal (more precisely, I'll fly to Dublin and will be picked up by car at the airport), and I'll spend 6 or 7 months there with a very lovely family of five. But right before that I need to survive a state exam, so wish me good luck!

To Write or Not to Write

I said earlier that I was going to take part in this year's NaNoWriMo. Or at least that was the plan. But, you know, things don't always go as we plan.

I tried to make preparations and all, I really did. I have the story planned in my head, and I made a few drafts, mostly about background information such as history, culture, mythology and language of the people in my made-up universe. I also drew a calendar for making notes of my word count. And I  started to do the thing, I wrote every day on the first week. But the thing is that during that week I realised that I don't really have the mood for writing.

It's not that I don't have enough time. Recently, I have plenty of free time - too much of it, actually. I also have lots of basic ideas that I really wish I could write sometime. But I don't feel like writing now, and I don't think it's a good idea to force it, because if I do so, I might grow to hate the story. So, after writing only about 200 words per day (which is practically less than nothing; one should write at least 50 000 words in 30 days) on the first week of November, I decided to quit the whole thing. This is not for me. Not now. Maybe next year.

Thesis Time Is Over

Woah, I can't believe I really did it!

I got my thesis binded yesterday in the morning, then a classmate of mine and I met my supervisor, because she still needed to sign a form for us, and we ended up spending the evening in a café and talking about random stuff. I got home just before midnight, and I had to get up at 5.30 am today, so I feel a bit exhausted. But I finally did it; I submitted the paper today, and now all I must do is to get prepared for the state exam.

By the way, my title was Use of the Old English Language in the 20th and 21st Century.

Look What I Got

Ok, I never planned to post my girlish stuff on this journal, but today I got something so awesome that I have to share with my still non-existing readers :) It's not an advertisement (ok, it might be, but never mind XD), I'm simply drooling over the thing. Sorry about the bad quality of the pictures, by the way. I don't own a camera at the moment, so I used my phone to take photos.

So I've recently ordered a make up palette from ebay. I didn't expect it to arrive yet because they wrote that it'd be delivered between Nov 6 and 27. But it already arrived this afternoon, and it's really cool!

I opened the box and went like woooah, because the colours are vivid and pretty, and they look exactly like on the stock photos. My picture below is not perfect, but believe me, they really are awesome.

It contains 60 colours of eye shadow (small squares), 12 lip glosses (rectangles) and 6 colours of blush (big circles). There are some colours that look a bit stupid; I especially dislike the third blush, which might look okay on my photos, but in reality it's a very vivid and shiny shade of orange that looks totally ridiculous. Though I haven't tried it yet, so it might look good on my face XD Overall, I think I'll more or less regularly use at least 80% of this set.

And the coolest thing is that it's not one big set but a collection of six smaller sets, all of which can be removed from the box and put into a small case with a mirror (on the right), so you can easily carry along with you just the part that you need.

 Actually, it is a bit difficult to remove the small sets from the box, because I'm afraid I might accidentally break the plastic case, but at least it means that they can't easily fall out of the case either. I immediately fell in love with this set when I opened the parcel~

If anyone is interested, it can still be found on ebay (still not an advertisement, I swear XD). I really recommend this seller, they shipped quickly, gave a tracking number without asking it and wrapped the box very well to prevent it from getting damaged or breaking on the way. Also, they put beautiful stamps of three different patterns on the envelope, and I'm a stamp collector, so they just really made my day :)

By the way, I'm still a bit nervous about my BA thesis, because my supervisor is too busy at the moment and hasn't had time yet to check my final text, but I need to submit the thing next Monday and it's still needed to print and bind as well.

And I'm also planning to take part in NaNoWriMo this November, so right now I'm trying to get prepared for it. This year I'm going to write in Hungarian, but next year I might try composing a novel in English. I don't feel ready for this yet, even after writing a thesis of about 57000 characters. A thesis is different; it's just a school project and has nothing to do with real writing XD

First Things First

So, now I think I should give a brief introduction of myself. Let's start this with a little bit of brainstorming:

Katie. Europe. Hungary. Languages. Mythologies. Historical linguistics. Theatre and filming. Wannabe novelist and screenwriter. Gonnabe actor. Usedtobe au pair and waitress. Nerd. Medievalist. Last year university student.

I don't think you'd have needed all this, though. Getting to know someone is never about listening to conventional stuff about their background, hobbies, interests or whatever. It's always about spending time with that particular someone. A step-by-step process. So I think each entry I post here will be a part of my introduction.

As for the journal, this is only a temporary design. I'm too lazy at the moment to make anything fancy, but I didn't just want to leave it totally uncustomised. The background is a stock image from Blogger, and the header is a photo of mine shot in the lovely medieval castle of a village called Pierrefonds, in France. The URL and the title is a reference to Tolkien, one of my favourite authors. Yup, I'm lack of creativity at the moment.

This is not my first journal, by the way. I used to have one in Hungarian as a teenager, then I had to write another one in English for one of my university courses. I'd prefer manually written journals, though, It has a unique nostalgic feeling which can't be replaced by online journals, but it's far more convenient to have it online so that I can reach it anywhere.

Ok, that's enough of me for today.